Thursday, May 16, 2013

Justice – part 3

Historically,
the Christian tradition from at least St. Thomas Aquinas forward has recognized
three spheres of justice: the commutative, the legal, and the distributive. Commutative
justice connotes justice between people. Arguing that all people have equal
worth and dignity is a fundamental commutative principle. An important
corollary is that all people (at least all sane adults) have one vote in the
political process.

Legal
justice, sometimes referred to as criminal justice, connotes justice between people
and the law. This sphere of justice encompasses civil, criminal, and commercial
law. Due process – the right to equal treatment at and before the law – is a
vital component of legal justice.

Distributive
justice denotes the fair allocation of power, economic resources, and other
goods. A major challenge with respect to distributive justice is balancing the
tension between respect for private property and the need to ameliorate existing
injustice. The principles of distributive and commutative justice together argue
for democracy as the form of government most consistent with Christianity.

The
three spheres of justice constitute a useful framework for examining the
different areas of life in which justice is important. However, the spheres
require further principles before they have sufficient specificity to define a Christian
ethic, e.g., the biblical teaching that all people are worthy of equal dignity
and respect because God created all.

Alternatively,
in the latter half of the twentieth century, Christians sometimes speak more
about rights than about justice. The concept of rights is not an explicitly
biblical concept. However, noted Yale philosopher Nicholas Wolterstorff,
writing from an avowedly Christian perspective, argues that the secular concept
of human rights actually emerged out of the secularization of the Christian tradition
(Justice: Rights and Wrongs, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
2008)).